A recent Wall Street Journal article makes a comparison between today's government bailouts and a financial law from the Bible. Deuteronomy 15:1-2 says: "At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release of debts. And this is the form of the release: Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it; he shall not require it of his neighbor or his brother, because it is called the Lord's release." Generally this law meant a release of private debt, and it benefited the poor or those who made bad decisions regarding the use of money. (And, of course, everyone knew the release was coming—it was not a surprise.)

In the Wall Street Journal, Robert B. Schonberger says the modern application is a reversal of the law, which favored the poor over the lender. He notes a historical example from Judah during the reign of Herod the Great. Among the Jews, as the year of release came near, a credit crunch arose when lenders refused to lend to others, fearing the debt would be released before being repaid. The solution was for the chief rabbi, Hillel, to redefine the law, thus allowing lenders to bypass the teaching of Deuteronomy. The effect was a nationalization of debt, somewhat similar to what we see today ("Ask the Rabbi: What the Sages of Old Would Have Said About the Bailout," Dec. 5, 2008).

This provided a temporary human solution. But God never intended any part of His law to be suspended by human authority. What happened in the first-century nation of Judah was only a band-aid to a larger social problem. Within a few decades Judah was destroyed by the Romans. This rabbinic decision was left to be debated among the Jews for centuries. A thousand years later another Jewish scholar, Maimonides, explained that Hillel's decision "was only temporarily valid...[he] made it clear that some day in the future, the original moral order as dictated in Deuteronomy would take precedence again" (ibid.).

Are we seeing God's principles being applied today? Only in the sense that we are seeing massive reorganization of debt and assets. There is a level of "forgiveness" of debt and mistakes as billions of dollars are going to large financial institutions and companies. In crises of the past these companies would have been allowed to fail. Today there are some companies considered too big and too valuable to the economic viability of the nation to allow to go under. Hence the debate whether to spend billions to bail out the "Big Three" automakers in Detroit.

As Schonberger's article concludes, the plan to bail out Wall Street might seem to employ more of the principles of Deuteronomy rather than modern capitalism, "but with a perverse role reversal between rich and poor, lenders and debtors."

The time is coming when this law, God's "original moral order," will be at the heart of a world economic system. But you don't have to wait to begin understanding God's wisdom in regulating national economies. Recently I gave a short talk about the related concept of the Jubilee to a meeting of the United Church of God. I encourage you to take the time to view this and gain an introduction to this most fascinating topic. I think it will help you better understand why we have to go through the cycles of economic downturn.

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